Life Is Strange: Episode 5 review – Polarized

The final episode of one of the year’s best interactive stories asks you to make one last gut-wrenching life or death decision.

Life Is Strange is not a difficult game to find fault with. For something that is all about the story the script is frequently poor, and the attempts at adding puzzle or actions elements to the entirely dialogue-orientated experience are never very successful. But Life Is Strange has heart, and despite all their attempts to appear as cinematic as possible video games rarely seem to understand that a good story starts with the characters and your ability to care about their situation. And that’s certainly one thing Life Is Strange gets right.

That said, we were very disappointed with the penultimate episode of this series; when it was released all the way back in July. It’s not that it had any new faults, but rather that it finally fell victim to the ones that had been there all along, with an even more leaden pace and dialogue so poor it underminded the whole experience. But this final episode is largely a return to form.

At this late stage there is little we can say about the specifics of the story without entering into spoiler territory (so we’d be very careful about watching the official trailer at the bottom of this page), so all we can really do is repeat the basics.

You play as a geeky photography student called Max, who has discovered she has the ability to rewind time. How and why she gained this ability has not been explained, but throughout the story she’s had three main goals: to ensure a vision of her coastal town being wiped out by a tornado don’t come to pass, to help her wastrel friend Chloe get her life back together, and to discover the fate of Chloe’s missing friend Rachel.

There’s also a fourth and considerably more urgent problem that anyone that played the last episode will be aware of, but we best not mention that. Although if you wanted more detailed analysis of the previous downloads just click here for Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, and Episode 4.

Life Is Strange: Episode 5 (PS4) – there are no easy decisions for Max

What we can say about Episode 5 is that it’s structured quite differently to the other episodes, and although there’s an awful lot of exposition – including the old cliché of the villain filling in all the plot holes for you, while confident you’ll never live to use the information – everything feels a lot faster-paced and confident than the meandering previous episode.

We have to say though that some of the newer story elements introduced in the previous episode are disappointingly mundane compared to the mystery of the earlier chapters, with one of the plot twists for a key character seemingly coming out of nowhere. However, one of this episode’s neatest tricks is how even if you’ve been playing Max as a goody two-shoes (which we have, and which seemed to us to be her natural state) an inspired sequence towards the end hints that her apparent altruism is the product of rather more complex psychological issues beneath the surface.

It’s insights such as this that have always enabled the series to rise above its often risible dialogue; although it’s also been helped by Max’s voice actress Hannah Telle, who is particularly good this episode. Even while many of the bit part actors remain notably less so.

But the biggest achievement of Life Is Strange is how it handles its moral choices. Unlike other games, especially Teltale Games titles, these make a significant difference to how the story plays out, such that major characters and plot points are completely different, or even entirely absent, depending on the choices you’ve made.

Another sequence towards the end of this episode highlights all the choices you’ve taken along your path and then leads up to what is the only major decision in the finale. But this one is so heartbreakingly difficult we must’ve sat there for a good five minutes pondering over it.

Life Is Strange: Episode 5 (PS4) – this is where all your decisions catch up with you

It’s a shock when the game asks its final question of you, but it quickly becomes obvious that that’s what the story was always about. That it wasn’t the danger of whether Arcadia Bay was going to get blown away by a tornado, but an issue of free will versus an unchangeable fate.

In getting that point across Episode 5 succeeds excellently well, even if this is by far the least interactive episode in the series. It reconfirms Life Is Strange as one of the best story-based games of the year, and of the generation so far. It is very far from perfect, but if developer Dontnod can find a better scriptwriter next time (they’re French, so were using an American writer) and perhaps better facial technology (the graphics are fine most of the time, but some of the close-ups look straight out of a PlayStation 2 games) then they may hit upon something truly revolutionary.

Even with its faults we’d strongly recommend Life Is Strange to anyone that enjoys Telltale’s output, or games like Heavy Rain or Under Dawn. Apart from its technological accomplishment in making sure character choices matter it’s a considerably more intelligent and thoughtful story than almost any of its peers. Most importantly it makes you care, about both the characters and the choices you make. And for any video game that is a real achievement.

Life Is Strange: Episode 5

In Short: A heartbreaking ending to a fascinatingly ambitious interactive story, that handles the build-up to its final dilemma with impressive confidence and heart.

Pros: The way all your choices are acknowledged by and influence the ending is hugely impressive, and the final decision is a real gut punch. A great central performance by Max’s voice actress.

Cons: Barely interactive for most of its length and although the dialogue has been worse the graphics have never looked so cheap and unemotive.